The tunnels encompassed most of the veins that were considered worth mining. Occasionally an operation was set up beyond the bulkheads, through a membrane which reduced some of the hazard but still left a miner outside. Those operations were worked only if the profit was worth the extreme risk. Working in deepsuits inside the tunnels was risky enough. If a suit should blow or a tunnel collapse, a miner was damned near doomed, anyway.
The lights flickered. Jack looked up and saw the gray mountain of a man wavering toward him. He chinned the com on. “Hey, Fritz! How’s it going? Looks like it’s just the two of us today.”
The big man nodded, but the com lines stayed empty and open. Jack touched his arm and, standing on tiptoe, touched face plates as Fritzi bent over. His face was shadowed, but Jack pulled back, stunned. It was as though he’d looked at a man twenty years older than his friend, at a face overwritten with the heavy gullies and lines of dissipation.
“Are you all right?”
Fritzi gave an impatient, jerking nod.
“All right. Just asking.” Jack reached to his belt hook and unlatched the welding wand. “I’ll take this seam.”
Automatically, Fritzi moved to the other side. In a few seconds, his wand flared to life and the two of them worked silently.
Jack lost himself in the orange-red line of welding as the seams came together and melded at his touch. He’d been working for hours when he realized that someone was talking, quietly, steadily, nonsensically.
It was Fritzi.
Jack turned the wand off and looked around. Fritzi had been moving methodically down the seams on his side, but the man in the gray suit moved in herky-jerky motions as though he fought every move he made.
Jack’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips, swiveled his head, found the drinking nipple and wet his mouth. He forced his voice to stay casual. “Fritzi! How’s it going?”
The suit spasmed to attention and turned in his direction. Jack fought a wild memory of battle armor with berserkers exploding out of them and his heart went into a wild palpitation that he breathed deeply to calm. This was Fritzi, for god’s sake. And Lasertown, not Milos.
But, for all his efforts to stay quiet, he knew that something had gone terribly wrong. Fritzi had not spent half a shift welding seams shut. Instead, he’d been cutting them open.
Fritzi stood in front of him, convulsing like a man gone mad, and the com lines signal broke apart in wild static.
He heard only, “I’ve got to go!” then nothing but the crackle of his own lines as Fritzi turned and ran, head first, at an unwelded seam. If he burst through that, there was nothing but dead rock beyond.
And the force of the erupting tunnel could well tear him and Jack apart.
“Wait! Fritzi, no! Don’t!” Jack dove at the man’s ankles, but Fritzi’s weight carried them careening into the weakened section.
It held. God knew how or why, but it held. Fritzi rolled over in his grip and Jack could hear muffled sobbing. He curled his hand into a fist and rapped gently on the face plate.
“Turn on the com, Fritzi.”
The crackle in his ears returned. Fritzi swallowed in great, heaving gulps. Jack helped him to sit up.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Ahhhhh.” The man rocked back and forth in grief. His gloved hands went up to hold his helmet.
“Is it Gail?”
The rocking figure stopped, then twisted toward him. Through the screening, he could see Fritzi’s face, grown red and bilious from all his emotion. Then, slowly, he shook his head.
Jack sat back. “What is it, Fritzi? Come on, this is Jack. You can tell me.”
Without a word, the man bounded up and charged across the T-section. Jack jumped to his feet, too, surprised by the explosion of energy. Fritzi hammered at the tunnel. “Let me out! Let me out!”
“Fritzi! Dammit, listen to me! What is it?” Then Jack changed his tone. “I can help you get out, if you tell me.”
The colossal being in the bunched up deep-suit slowly turned toward him. Jack heard a sharp intake of breath over the com lines. He held his own. Was Fritzi going to lunge at him or talk with him?
Fritzi exhaled, a long quavering sigh. He dropped to his knees. “I went out,” he said, in gusty, wavering words that were almost too low for Jack to hear. “They took us out to dig. And it… it was there, Jack. It was waiting for me. Just me.”
“What was there?”
“What they wanted us to dig for. It’s… it’s underground. It can’t be seen yet. But I’ve got to go back, to help it. It… calls me. All the time. Sometimes I can stand it, but—” and he broke off and began sobbing again.
Jack, for lack of anything better to do, thumped Fritzi’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. He wondered if something ungodly was alive, waiting in the depths of the dead moon.
“I’ve got to go!” Fritzi screamed. He knocked Jack aside as he got to his feet and barreled toward the weak section again. A second time, Jack dove and caught his friend by the ankles as Fritzi hit the tunnel with a resounding thud.
It held, Fritzi lay facedown, temporarily exhausted. Jack was reaching for the long-range com switch when the explosion went off. The world opened up and rock powdered around him. He hit, still clutching Fritzi by the ankles, and a mountain fell on top of them.
Chapter Fourteen
The first thing Jack noticed when he woke was that his gloves were empty. He flexed his hands, remembering the solid feel of Fritzi’s heavily muscled body within his grip, and wondered where the man had gone. And then he noticed that his hands were about the only thing he could move, that half of Lasertown must be resting on his back.
Why had the tunnel blown? Fuzzily, he remembered hearing the sound of an explosion.
He held his breath and listened for the deathly sound of a telltale leak. Nothing came to his ears but the normal hum of the suit’s systems. He seemed to be intact. So far. He was blind, nearly, for his face plate pointed downward and this suit had no cameras for odd angle viewing like his armor did. Jack lay very still and tried not to think of his odds… or Fritzi’s. Had the man been torn away from him by the avalanche of rock? Or had he clawed his way up and through and out? This particular tunnel followed a vein relatively close to the moon’s surface. Fritzi could have made it.
But to what fate? Fritzi had about as much chance wandering around up there as he did buried down here. Maybe less.
He couldn’t see his hands. The weight on the back of the suit kept him facedown and blind, but slowly, determinedly, he dragged his arms back. He could feel the gravel shift and pull at him. He’d been buried like this once before, in a couple of tons of silt and river water.
Then it was the battle armor that had gotten him out. Now he had nothing to depend on but the recycling computers’ sensors and his fellow diggers. There would be an alarm and a crew. Any second now, he should be hearing Boggs’ gravelly voice over the com letting him know they were going to get him out.
Jack shifted his head, turtlelike and nudged the com switch to make sure it was still on. Nothing. Not even break-up. Was it functioning? Why wasn’t anybody trying to reach him?
“This is Jack, Boggs. I’m down in the T-section. We’ve had a blow-out. I know the bulkheads are probably sealed off, but I’m alive and in good shape. Somebody come get me.”
He managed to pull his hands back and tucked them under his face plate. There was no more grinding of shifting rock. A portion of the tunnel must be curving over him, protecting him from most of the rock fall, shielding him even as it kept him imprisoned on the tunnel flooring. As long as there was no leak in his suit, and he had air, he could hold out.
The second thing that struck him was that this had been no accident. Boggs’ pairing of Jack with Fritzi was deliberate, even though Fritzi’s aberrant behavior must have been apparent. Why? Why would Boggs want to take Jack out? Was it Boggs who’d whispered in Jack’s ear that he was a dead man?
And the third thing
that struck him was that nothing that had happened in the last twenty or so years had been an accident, except perhaps for the survival of the transport cold ship with him still alive inside it. He hadn’t been meant to live, not on Milos, not on Claron, not on Malthen and certainly not here.
And the fact that he’d remained alive was not due to his alert grasp of the facts. He’d stumbled along on luck and fortune, not willing to believe that he’d really been a target, convinced that he was too insignificant to be the cause of a firestorm that had destroyed an entire planet.
He looked into the dead dirt grinding into his faceplate. “Amber,” he said quietly to himself, “I think they finally kicked the farm out of the farm boy.”
This was war. He knew it now, as he should have known it all along. Not between the Thraks and the Dominion or any one of the dozens of other combinations he’d been juggling. It was war between him and Winton. Why, he wasn’t sure. But who and what Jack was, was important enough to a galactic empire to wipe out an entire planet. Jack saw it now, crystal clear, as he’d never seen it before. It was war, and he was a soldier in it, whether he had his armor or not.
It was time he started thinking like it.
Static trickled in over his com lines. Jack turned his head. The volume was greatly damped down. It was difficult in his current position, but he skewed his head around so he could check the power gauges. Air, he had plenty of. Battery power seemed to be another matter. Any signals he was putting out or receiving were fading and rapidly. He had some sort of drain, possibly a short. That kind of damage meant he probably had a leak, too, but the suit had an inner layer, a self-sealant, which could hold a small leak for a while. The good news was that he hadn’t noticed a leak. Either it had sealed or the suit damage didn’t include a puncture. The bad news was, if his suit ran out of charge, it made relatively little difference.
Sound bled in over the static. Jack twitched. Was that Boggs he heard? Or Bull Quade’s voice?
Never mind. Anybody’s would do.
His throat had gone dry as he croaked back, “Here. Down here. Follow the signal.”
He chinned the emergency switch to put out an automatic signal, had a moment to notice how stale the air had gotten, and realize how terribly, terribly sleepy he was and then, nothing.
Amber held onto St. Colin’s arm, quivering imperceptibly, telling herself it was the chill of the sight of the tunnel mouths opening up into the domes like some hungry, parasitic creature that swallowed men whole. She heard, though she wasn’t meant to, one of the foremen saying softly, “They’re bringing the bodies up now.”
Bodies? Jack? She curled her fingers tighter onto the Walker’s arm as he cleared his throat and answered. “How many?”
“Five got caught. Two different sections blew out.
“Chain reaction?”
“No. At least, we don’t think so. And one man is missing.”
“Missing?”
“He’s not where he should be. It looks like… like he just got up and walked away.”
Colin patted her hand absently as he answered, “Inside the tunnels?”
“No. He’s outside somewhere.”
Lenska muttered, “Good as dead, then.” He made a funny sound and then added, “I’m sorry, Amber.”
She looked up fiercely. “He’s not dead! I’d know it if he was.”
Colin kept his big, warm hand over her chilled one this time and squeezed it gently. “Patience. It might not even be Jack,” he chided. “They won’t let us down in the mining operation or the barracks. Let’s be thankful they’re letting us wait in the loading docks.”
Amber said nothing. She turned her fierce gaze elsewhere, to the tram cars waiting to take the dead and injured to the hospital. Men sitting around, bored looks on their faces, waited to hear. Suddenly, there was a buzz of activity. They got to their feet and began to make arrangements of the litters and medical supplies. “They’re coming,” she said, and the hoarseness of her voice surprised her.
The foreman standing with them listened to his ear plug and then nodded sharply. “They’re on the elevator,” he said, “with the first load.” He looked at the two Walkers and the girl. “At least one of ‘em’s alive.”
“Who is it? Did they say who it was?”
He shook his head and walked away, busy directing a tram car into position by the elevator shaft.
Amber could not stop trembling. Her throat ached for the long moments it took for the elevator to rise into position and the freight bay doors to open. When they did, it was with a siren frenzy of sound and movement.
“Coming through, move it, move it, move it!”
She saw broken bodies, blood and flesh leaking out from shreds of deepsuits, men and gear melded forever. An oxygen tank and mask obscured the face of one man, hidden under a mylar blanket, his gurney propelled forward by a team of men. Amber broke loose from St. Colin and surged forward. She ducked between the paramedics and forced her way to the gurney, stopping it.
She didn’t recognize him. One of the medics snapped at her, “Get out of the way,” and she answered petulantly, “I just want to know who it is.”
The nearly motionless man moved. His head turned. Under the clear plastic oxygen mask that obscured nearly as much as it revealed, pale blue eyes opened. Then he croaked, “Amber?”
“Oh, my god,” she said and fell to her knees in tears.
***
“It should have been much worse than it was,” the doctor said, moving away. “He’ll be bruised around the knees for a while, but he’ll be up and around tomorrow. The only thing that got to him was the bad air, but his suit was functioning on a minimal level. I don’t foresee any long-term effects.” He spoke, not to the patient or Amber, but to the Walker. “We’ll have him back in the barracks in the morning.”
Amber’s back tensed. The doctor’s voice held an undertone, as though he was pronouncing the fact that the garbage would be back in the Disposall in the morning—where it belonged. She held onto Jack’s hand. It had been months, she knew, but her throat stayed convulsively tight. He looked awful. He’d lost so much weight and muscle tone, and his skin had gone deathly pale. She wondered if he’d be strong enough to wear the battle armor. Strong enough physically as well as mentally. But she kept her thoughts to herself. Jack didn’t even know she had Bogie with her, yet.
The Walker waited until the doctor left the cubicle and then sat down with a flourish of his deep blue robe. He looked about cautiously and the corner of Amber’s mouth twitched. The religious leader was looking for monitors. He was not, she noted, quite the innocent he made himself out to be.
“Well, my boy,” Colin said blandly. “It gives me great pleasure to return a favor.”
“Me, too,” Jack said dryly. “How long before you have me out of here?”
“The governor assures me a couple of days, no longer. Quite an unusual woman,” he added as an afterthought.
Amber winced as Jack made a feeble attempt to smile. “Watch out for her,” he husked.
“Oh, I will, have no doubt.” St. Colin returned the smile. “My men have been sitting here for months trying to deal with Governor Franken.”
Jack struggled to sit up. Colin protested, but Amber helped. The effort brought a faint rush of color to his too pale face. His sandy blond hair was dirty and grimed. She tucked a strand away from his eyes. In the morning, they’d promised him a shower as though it had been a gift. Perhaps it had been.
“How did you find me?” This to St. Colin, but the Walker’s wise brown gaze flicked to Amber where it held steady.
“You’ll have to ask her. I have the feeling that I only come in toward the end of the tale.” He gathered up the plastifile. “I have some work to do, if you don’t mind. I’ll be back later.” He paused at the cubicle door. “Don’t stay too long, Amber. Beep Lenska when you want to go back to the hotel.”
“All right.”
Jack’s gaze watched the Walker leave, before he turned ba
ck to her.
“Don’t ask,” Amber said faintly.
“All right. I won’t.” He fussed at the oxygen tubes about his nose. “Did you find out who did it?”
“He’s dead. He was supposed to have you picked up and terminated, but he decided to make a little more money, so he had you chilled down and contracted out. The trail was very well hidden.”
“Who was he?”
“Huan Ng. I wasn’t able to trace him backward, but I think we both know…” the sentence trailed off.
Jack closed his eyes briefly.
“Jack?”
“I’m all right.” He looked back at her.
“You’re supposed to rest. Maybe I can catch up with Colin.”
He put up his hand. She looked at it, remembering suddenly that she’d forgotten about the sheared off little finger, and she caught his hand, warming it between hers. “Don’t go yet.”
She settled into her chair a little happier. “All right. I won’t.”
“What about Fritzi? No one will tell me about Fritzi.”
Amber frowned slightly as she thought. “Is he the miner supposed to have been buried with you?” “Yes.”
She shrugged, a lithe movement that echoed throughout her supple body, giving Jack thoughts that shocked him. He pinked up, but she didn’t seem to notice his sudden flush. Had he been gone that long that she’d grown up that much?
“I don’t know about anybody else. One guy lived through it, but he lost both legs. He’ll be shipped out for prosthetics. And then there’s the guy they won’t really talk about—”
Lasertown Blues Page 12